Intern Diaries: Real Detroit Weekly

Mary 2007-June 2007

In the summer of 2007 I drove to Ferndale for an internship interview at Detroit’s leading (hey Metro Times, did you hear that?) entertainment newspaper, Real Detroit Weekly. It was pretty apparent from the get-go that this internship was going to be an uphill battle for me. At my interview, I sat with my dress-pant legs crossed on a mismatched desk chair in a worn down meeting room across from the slightly balding, torn-jeans wearing editor-in-chief. He was clearly cooler, chiller, hipper and at least 10 years older than me.

Confession: I know diddlysquat about movie, music and local trends; but I did know I needed someone to gamble with welcoming a green college reporter to their team. Lucky for me, RDW did. I spent a loooot of time at my super old Mac in the office—which was an odd corridor of a commercial sign company’s building—staring at the screen HOPING to be as easily inspired as my coworkers were.


My non-trendy
2007 self
One time my supervisor pitched the idea of covering the late night hours at local African American hair salons. Some of the more advance braiding can take hours and he had noticed several shops on Woodward were open 24-hours. He planned on staying up all night in one store to monitor the business and atmosphere throughout the night. I felt my confidence being corn rowed the more he explained the idea—the more he talked the more I felt the growing pain of wishing I had thought of that story myself.

I wrote a few assigned album and movie reviews, but desperately wanted to pitch something of my own. After a slow start, I eventually found that the best stories didn’t have to be hunted for—they often told themselves naturally. I put a face to the teen Texas Hold’em trend by interviewing a kid I went to high school with who turned his after-school hobby into a Las Vegas success story and I hung out in the garage of a girl I use to swim with in a cloud smoke while I tried to understand what was so damn great about hookah pipes.

But my biggest RDW breakthrough came when I stopped trying to be trendy and hit the jackpot with a general interest 'wow' story—definitely of more interest than poker and hookah to me at least. My city was buzzing with gossip that a local girl graduated from high school early then moved on to finish her undergrad at the University of Michigan in one year. My interview with her ran well before other competitive news sources—like Metro Times—and scored big points for RDW.

That story was a huge win for me after a summer of struggling to find where I fit in an off-centered newsroom. It proved to my editors that the tattoo-less, quiet, Gap-dressing girl could hit it big like the rest of 'em; but it proved to me that even in a niche outside my comfort zone, I could find my footing and thrive.
Links to my favorite Real Detroit Weekly content:
8/22/07 | Character Sketch: Nicole Matisse | RDW Link
8/21/07 | Teen Texas Hold'em | RDW Link
7/03/07 | Ryan Shaw, Musician | RDW Link

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